Custom essays on Samurai’s Values

The main value of samurai, first of all, was loyalty to overlord, expressed in service to overlord, to be of service is to put another above yourself. Loyalty is faithfulness or a devotion to a person or cause. It relied
the provisions of loyalty, drawn from Shinto, Buddhist belief in impermanence of all earthly things, which strengthened from a samurai spirit of sacrifice and do not fear death, and philosophy of Confucianism, which made loyalty of the first virtue. Near loyalty was the principle of duty. (Shirane, 45)
One of the key value of Samurai was personal courage, unbending courage. ”True courage is to live, when lawfully to live, and die, when lawfully to die”. “Samurai should go to the death with a clear consciousness of what to do and that is not worth his dignity”.
The sense of honor is also very important. The consciousness of self-esteem is brought up in Samurai from childhood. Warriors strictly guarded their “good name”, a sense of shame was for the samurai hardest. We can see at in the book, while Genji always behaved with sense of honor, he said: “I should weigh every word and always ask myself, is it true that I‘m going to say”. Also Genji was polite with women, he showed his good attitude and manners to all the women in his life, as he never abandoned any of them. He had the true goodness of the mind and spirit, the unbiased kindness to do good.
Honor and glory valued higher than life for samurai.
In all his actions samurai was supposed to come from considerations of the higher justice and fairness. A true samurai had only one judge of his honor – himself, as you cannot hide from yourself.
It is important to point out such value as the Wisdom of Honesty, as honesty is the human quality of communicating and acting truthfully, related to truth as a value, and Genji tried to be honest, and first of all with himself.
So “The Tale of Genji” is one of the greatest works in Japanese literature, as it truly depicts life and traditions of samurai in that time. “The tale of Genji” shows socio-philosophical traditions of the society, it is devoted to samurai tradition, existed for thousands of years. Those looking fierce and tough warriors, ready at any time to resort to his sharp shiny swords, were stern and ascetic full of inner discipline and poetry. Their whole life comes down to, to die with dignity, while maintaining their honor. Their world is based on honor, generosity, service, courage, sacrifice and a highly developed culture.
Love theme is reflected very touching in the book, and sad heartfelt poetry with oriental motifs emphasizes the dramatic, romantic atmosphere and a samurai love theme of the book.
Feel the deep meaning, a philosophy, and enjoy the overall beauty of the book, and also learn a lot from the eastern people – patience, generosity, diligence, discipline, ability to appreciate every moment of life lived.

Work cited
Puette, William J. “Guide to the Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu”. Rutland, 1983
Shirane, Haruo. “Envisioning the Tale of Genji: Media, Gender, and Cultural Production”. New York: Columbia University Press, 2008
Morris, Ivan. “The World of the Shining Prince”. New York, 1994.
Mostow, Joshua S. “Picturing “The Tale of Genji”. The Journal of the Association of Teachers of Japanese. April 1999. (1–25)